I probably would have added a ‘some’ in front of psychiatric medications and a ‘can’ in front of ‘cause’. And I draw the line at blaming all shooting homicides in the US on psychiatric medications, but it is true that some psychiatric medications cause psychiatric side effects. For a harrowing account of how psychiatric care can go horribly wrong one need only read Rebekah Beddoe’s memoir Dying For A Cure.

Psychiatric care done right is complex and unfortunately not always easy to access.

So I wake up one morning in a room with nothing in it but a bed and bars on the window, and I spend the day trying desperately to explain my way out of that room with no success. By the following morning the anti-psychotic medication has started to work and I realise I was wrong. These past days my reality has been completely different to the truth. There are no mirrors, so I can’t see what I look like. But I know I can’t possibly feel like this and still look like me. So, I ask my husband to take a picture of me so that I can see what it looks like to be this sick.